Citi Bike Will Start Rolling Out 139 New Stations August 10

Hard to believe it’s only been two years since bike-share launched in New York. After a tumultuous start roiled by software bugs and the bankruptcy of a key supplier, the city’s bike-share system is finally on a more even keel and ready to expand. Today NYC DOT and Citi Bike announced a firm date when the next batch of stations will begin to roll out: August 10.

The expansion zones will be getting 139 new bike-share stations this year, the first phase in what will add up to at least 375 new stations by the end of 2017. Right now the system has 332 stations, so it’s about to grow 40 percent.

Here are the numbers from Citi Bike about which neighborhoods are getting how many stations in 2015:

Queens: Long Island City, 12 stations

Brooklyn: Bed Stuy, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, 79 new stations

Manhattan: Upper East and West Sides to 86th Street, 48 new stations

One fly in the ointment — and it’s a big one — NYC DOT is planning to spread out the new stations too thinly. If DOT and Motivate don’t figure out a plan to maintain a sufficient density of stations as the system grows, bike-share won’t be as reliable as it should be in the expansion zones, and that will spell trouble for the whole system.

Hopefully DOT will work out a better plan, because the growth of bike-share is great news, and the system needs to stay reliable to keep on growing.

Does anyone know how you request a station expansion? My local Citibike station is too small for the demand. In the mornings it’s always empty and at night it’s always full. It’s not just a rebalancing problem. The station needs more bikes.

AlexB

This is just way too slow for such a transformative service. How many years til they get to the Bronx? Flushing? Flatbush?

Jonathan R

The RSS feed delivered the article with a screenshot from the bike share mobile app. I wanted to complain that the app gave undue prominence to highways (“Take I-278 to many bike share stations”) but here on the page, the map has been replaced by a color-block map of the new coverage area. I guess the editors and I thought the same.

Joe R.

Yes, exactly. I could see bike share being really useful and popular along many of the excruciatingly slow and infrequent feeder bus routes in mid and eastern Brooklyn/Queens. Downtown Flushing is one area where many such feeder bus routes converge. That would be a great place for a huge number of docks, perhaps in the municipal parking lot, and docks along the bus routes. Downtown Jamaica would also be another great location.

Mike

The previous image was way more useful — and highlights the fact that one religious group has been able to convince the city to remove this form of transportation entirely within the area where they’re the majority. What’s next, closing the streets in that neighborhood to bikes on their sabbath?

Lacking CitiBikes

I think Motivate’s strategy in expanding so quickly – and thinly – is to boost memberships and generate a lot of revenue. They are expanding in the summer and likely hoping the cash infusion will bolster them through the winter.

As someone who can’t find Citi Bikes at his local station (54th and 9th) http://nocitibikesat54and9.blogspot.com I am not looking forward to Citi Bike pouring resources into rebalancing the under-populated UWS and UES and continuing to ignore my neighborhood.

AnoNYC

Dying for that UES/UWS expansion (cross-town baby) but I definitely like the fact that I can now access LIC via Citi Bike.

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